Monday, August 25, 2003

Deja Vu All Over AgainRemember back in February and March when we had hope that the UN would deny Bush his war by voting down his second resolution? Bush was bribing and threatening countries on the security council--even spying on their UN delegations. But France stood firm with its veto threat, Russia, China and Germany stood with them, and eventually it appeared that Bush might not get more than about four of the fifteen security council votes. So he just scrapped the whole thing and had his war anyway. Well, its happening again:

What it means is that whatever oil they can get out of sabotaged pipelines will go down as the most expensive cheap oil in history. As Senator Hagel said the other day, it may well be $300 to $400 BILLION over three to five years. $400 billion over 4 years would be $100 billion per year, which works out to $343 for each of 291 million Americans. If each American is allocated 5000 vehicle-miles at 20 miles per gallon, that works out to an additional $1.37 for each gallon of gas. But they're not being asked to pay it directly--the bill goes directly to the future: income taxes needed to pay the interest on the huge debt, and money that will be taken out of social security, medicare, and other government programs.

The war is about cheap oil, no matter how much it costs. But the Bushies will do everything possible to prevent the public from realizing the cost at the place it belongs--the gas pump.